WordPress Tools For Building Your Ecommerce Store and Online Presence

Last week I put up a 5 minute ecommerce store with WordPress video and I was kind of surprised at how many people did NOT know that you had many options for doing ecommerce with WordPress. So I wanted to take a little more time out and research some more tools for you.

The Install Instructions

The easiest way to achieve this is by downloading and installing the WP e-Commerce plugin.

e-Commerce Install

Assuming you have a working version of WordPress installed you must do the following:

1. Download the e-Commerce plugin
2. Copy the folder to your local plugins directory
3. Activate the plugin and configure it to your liking

e-Commerce setup

Once the plugin is installed the most important things to do are:

1. Set your default shipping country and associated shipping settings
2. Setup and configure the presentation settings
3. Setup your receipt notification email address
4. Setup your payment gateway
5. Add products
6. Upgrade to gold if you want to add multiple images to products

PayPal Setup

These are the instructions for setting up PayPal for your WP e-Commerce store.

1. Browse to PayPal and sign up using your email address
2. Under Profile > Shipping Settings check the allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above

Google Checkout Setup

These are the instructions for setting up Google Checkout for your WP e-Commerce store

1. Browse to Google Checkout and click sign up now
2. Select whether or not your business has a Google Account for services like AdWords or Gmail?
3. Create your account using your Gmail email address

At your WP e-Commerce store’s Admin

Now that you have a Google Checkout account setup enter your Google Checkout Merchant ID and Key into the payment gateway settings page in the WP e-commerce admin panel

1. Under e-Commerce > Gateway Options choose Google Checkout as your payment gateway.
2. In "Google Checkout Merchant ID" enter your Merchant ID.
3. In "Google Checkout Merchant Key" enter your Merchant Key.
4. Choose your Server Type (Sandbox vs Production), currency, and button style
5. Click the button that says "Submit"

Ecommerce Themes/Templates

Crafty Cart – Ecommerce theme that is free, but it requires a plug in to function. A Retro Shop Theme designed for the WP e-Commerce Plugin

Shopper Press – Free ecommerce themes

Ecommerce Themes – these are not free, but have a very polished look and feel.

Ecommerce Plugins from Web Design Booth.com

WP e-Commerce

It is the most powerful free Wordpress Ecommerce plugin. It integrates with a lot of payment options and designers may easily tweak the look and feel of the website by utilizing Wordpress PHP template tags, shortcodes, and widgets. Besides these, WP e-Commerce has a complete documentation and beginners are easy to get started with it.

eShop

eShop is an accessible shopping cart plugin for WordPress, packed with various features. It can handles downloadable products and supports various payment options such as Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay and Cash/Cheque.

YAK for WordPress

It is an open source Wordpress plugin for Ecommerce. It supports posts and pages as products and uses categories to handle different type of products. YAK supports different payment options too. Basic documentation is free while the advance useages documentation costs $20.

Shopp

Shopp is a premium Wordpress plugin for Ecommerce solution. You will have complete control over the shopping experience, which mean you can customize the design with stylesheets and Wordpress PHP tags. The documentation is pretty complete, and you can get more supports from the community via the support forums.

Wordpress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Plugin

This simple plugin lets users add an “Add to cart” button anywhere on the blog. Customers can view their items from the shopping cart page.

Tutorials And Resources

1. Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress in under 5 minutes – A video tutorial from Wordpress.tv that teach you about how to create an Ecommerce website with Wordpress and the WP e-Commerce plugin.

2. Getting set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin: settings and configuration – Another video tutorial which walks you through the process of getting set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin.

3. How to Build an Online Store With WordPress – A simple tutorial on how to use Ecommerce Themes from iThemes to built your own online store.

4. How To Open An Online Store With WordPress In Less Than 30 Minutes – Shows you how to built and create an online store with Wordpress in less than 30 minutes. It is very suitable for beginners.

5. WP e-Commerce SEO Tutorial – This SEO tutorial is designed to show you how to optimize WP e-Commerce for maximum traffic from the search engines.

6. WP e-Commerce Review For Wordpress – This article reviews the pros and cons of WP e-Commerce. A must read article for WP e-Commerce users!

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